Augustus Toplady (Vol.5, 82-97), C of E, Calvinism, 39 Arts, Te Deum, Absolution

For pages 1-42, see:
http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2010/11/augustus-toplady-c-of-e-calvinism.html

For pages 43-82, see:
http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-from-augustus-toplady-c-of-e.html

We resume our thread on "the obvious," to use Toplady's phrase, about the "Calvinistic consensus" in the Church of England during the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. For a moment of relief and reverie, there really was a time when the Archbishop of Canterbury was a Calvinist. Jarring, but true...for almost 80 years.

Pg. 82, Toplady’s rejoinder that Puritans were the troublers of the Church of England with substantive inattention to Charles 1’s Romewardizing dalliances by way of his Queen, Laud and sidekick, Buckingham. The same polemic is urged in our time by tired, non-reading Anglo-Catholics and latitudinarians.

“When arguments fall short, it is too common with controversial writers to call names, and fling dirt; in hopes of casting an odium, on what they find themselves unable to confute. I could wish, sir, that you had not stooped to this illiberal recourse, your following expostulation had then been spared; page 93. " Consider what faction it was, which then in the time of Charles I.] ** prevailed towards the overthrow of the Church. Was it not that of the Puritans ? And were not the doctrines of Calvinism their leading principles?" Permit me, sir, to ask, Were all the disturbers of those times Calvinists? Were Charles, and his French Queen; were Laud and Buckingham, Calvinists? These were the primary disturbers, whose evil counsels, and whose arbitrary measures, laid the sad foundation of those disturbances, which issued in the overthrow of the Church. The conclusions of that unhappy reign, and the miseries that followed, are to be radically charged, upon on those who repressed the haughty strides of despotism ; but on the despots themselves, whose violent proceedings rendered that opposition absolutely necessary. Matters, at last, were wound up to that fatal height, that both sides found themselves reduced to the dismal necessity of going to much greater lengths, than either of them foresaw at first setting out. On one hand, there was a court equally despotic and corrupt, and (as the event proved) no less feeble, than proud and unyielding. On the other there was patriotic zeal, gradually enflamed into party-rage, by a long series of repeated insults and unrelenting oppressions. No wonder, therefore, that, under the confluence of such circumstances, the constitution received that eventual subversion, which you, either through forgetfulness of history, or by disingenuous misrepresentations, would, untruly, and ridiculously, charge on the Calvinism of that age.”

P.83, Toplady judiciously weighs the differences between Churchmen and Dissenters—which were ecclesiological and liturgical, not theological (proper), anthropological, Christological, or soteriological. Revisionists, generally Anglo-Catholics, trot the term “Puritan” outwards with un-nuanced or historical basis.

What concern, for instance, had the doctrines of efficacious grace, and final perseverance, in the just opposition that was made to ship-money, star-chamber prosecutions, and ten thousand other intolerable grievances? Let me request you, sir, as you tender your own credit, to think before you write, and weigh matters with some degree of care. Had you done this lately, you had not attempted to palm such absurdities on the public.—I must add, That the history of Charles's and the two preceding reigns, makes it undeniable, that those of-the Puritans, who were non-conformists, did not dissent from our Church in doctrinal matters, but, solely, in the matter of rites and ceremonies. And what had this partial dissent to do with the doctrine of predestination, in which the main body, both of conformist and non-conformists, were reciprocally agreed?

Pg.83, the first 100 years of Reformation Anglicanism was Calvinistic…until Laud, called a “corruptor” and “destroyer” by Toplady. Will Western Anglicans use this language? REC Bishops, including Mr. Sutton, won't.

If a Calvinist, and a non-conformist, were!... as you would unjustly insinuate, convertible names; it would follow, that we must un-church our own Church, for the first hundred years after the Reformation, and date its genuine commencement from the introduction of Arminianism under archbishop Laud. That innovating, hot-headed prelate, if your premises are admitted, is to be considered as the father and founder of the Church of England whereas he was, in reality, its corruptor, and its eventual destroyer : for he drove so rapidly towards Rome, that he overset the Church, Of which he unhappily held the reins; and was not a little accessary to the concomitant fall of the state likewise, which, rushing precipitant, entombed both his sovereign and himself in its ruins. I will only observe farther, that, even in the present century, we have had some Calvinistic bishops. Bishop Beveridge, and Bishop Hopkins, for instance. And will you call these truly bright ornaments of our Church, Sectarists, Puritans, and Methodists, because they were professed Calvinists?”

Pg. 83, footnote. Toplady concedes that some Puritans were at odds with the Church of England, but not about Calvinism per se, but about church government and liturgy.

Albeit the Puritans disquieted our Church, about their conceived discipline, yet they never moved any quarrel against the doctrine of our Church. Which is well to be observed: for, if they had embraced any doctrine which the Church of England denial, they would assuredly have quarrelled about that, as well as they did about the discipline.

Pg. 83, footnote, an “obvious remark,” to wit, that Church of England divines were Calvinist (until Laud).

Upon which passage, quoted from Bishop Carleton's Examination of Montague's Appeal, Dr. Edwards makes this obvious remark : “This is a full confutation of that idle conceit, taken up by so many in our age, that the Anti-Arminian doctrines were not the doctrines of our Church, of our bishops, and of the rest of our clergy, but only of a few disciplinarians and non-conformists." Veiitas Redux, p. 548.

Pg. 93, Toplady observes the force of Article 17 of the Thirty-nine Articles.

Speaking of the doctrines of election and reprobation, you justly observe, that you are "pressed with the authority of the 17th Article," p. 103. Indeed you are, and pressed hard too: else you would never have added, as you do in the next page, "The article speaks of a predestination, decreed by God's counsel, secret to us; and to be discerned only by the working of the spirit of Christ mortifying the works of the flesh: and directs us to receive Cod's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in the holy Scripture. " Is it possible that these truly Calvinistic sentences should drop from the pen of a Dr. Nouwell? What a concession is here . You have granted as much as any Calvinistic writer could have granted, or a Calvinistic reader can desire. You are got into the very midst of Geneva, before you are aware: a place where I no more expected to have met you, than the Normans did, at one time, think of seeing the great lord Clarendon at Roan.

Pg. 96, Toplady and the Absolution or Declaration of the Remission of Sins in Morning and Evening Prayer, 1662 BCP.

Surely you will never offer to father such horrid doctrine upon the Church of England! Did all sinners truly repent and unfeignedly believe, they would come under the opposite denomination of saints. The plain meaning, then, of this declarative absolution, is, that, until repentance and faith (the two grand constituents of regeneration) are wrought in us, and (shew forth themselves by the peaceable fruits of righteousness, we have no right to look upon ourselves as pardoned and absolved : but that, when these are wrought in us, we have in the judgment of our Church, a safe and Scriptural warrant to conclude that we are in a pardoned state. Our reconciliation unto God by the death of his Son, being to be inferred from and proved by (though in no sense founded upon), the grace he hath given us, and the good works he enables us to do. And, that the faith and repentance, which the absolution mentions, were, in the intention of the compilers, considered as the effects of God's free grace, and not of man's free-will, appears, incontestably, from a subsequent part of the absolution itself; which runs thus: "Wherefore Let us beseech him to grant us true repentance and his holy Spirit; that those things may please him, which we do at this present, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy." But, upon your principles, in vain we do pray for these blessings; since, if your hypothesis be right, we had them in our own power before. Were Arminian free-willers to act consistently with their darling tenet, they would never pray at all. Our Church, in the Te Deum, asserts, That Christ, By his incarnation and death, opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers: But the whole of mankind are not believers: Ergo, our Church, in the Te Deum, does not assert, that Christ opened the kingdom of heaven to the whole of mankind.

Pg. 97, Toplady, Te Deum Laudamus, and the suffrages.

Nay, I will go a step further. The Church, in this place, does evidently limit redemption, to only a part of mankind. For, by saying that Christ opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers ; she virtually declares, that he opened heaven to believers only: so that, in the judgment of the Church, they alone were intentionally redeemed by Christ, who should finally believe. And what is this but the very essence of that innocent, yet much dreaded thing, called Calvinism ? in running away from which, you plainly run away from the Church. ha fugis, ut praeter casam. Still your ammunition is not exhausted; for, in the fame page, you hurl another thunderbolt at John Calvin's head : "The suffrages, offered up, by the priest, and all the congregation alternately, are quite inconsistent with the notion of absolute predestination and indefectible assurance :—' Grant us thy salvation'—' Take not thy holy spirit from us.’ The suffrages themselves are most excellent; but your inference from them is a mere tehtm imbelle sine ict.ii. As if prayer (which is one of the very means, by which the end is decreed to be come at)—as if prayer, on man's part, was incompatible with predestination on God's! So far is this from being true, that the belief of his immutable purposes is the very thing which excites, and warrants, effectual fervent prayer, and puts life and confidence into our approaches to the throne of grace. I shall give two remarkable instances of this; one from Scripture, the other from our Liturgy, i. From Scripture. David having received some gracious intimations of what good things God had decreed to bestow on his family after him, instead of sitting down idle, and restraining prayer before God, as if human duty was superfluous, on the supposition of divine decrees, the holy monarch breaks for into supplication for the very mercies which had been so peremptorily promised :—Thou, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying I will build thee an house; therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee, 2 Sam. vii. 27. It is equally plain, that the compilers of our admirable liturgy considered matters in the same view. Those evangelical divines well knew, that God hath determined the times before appointed (Acts xvii. 26.) ; and that the day of Christ's second coming is, in particular, fore-ordained and fixed, in God's determinate counsel and foreknowledge (Acts xvii. 31.). " Surely, then," might an Arminian say, "those compilers have not directed "us to pray for the coming of this predestined period."